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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Eagleton argues that reading literature in a new critical way was a recipe for what?
(a) Political progress.
(b) Political inertia.
(c) Political ambition.
(d) Political consciousness.

2. Who developed hermeneutics?
(a) E.D. Hirsch.
(b) Hans-Georg Gadamer.
(c) Roland Barthes.
(d) Stanley Fish.

3. What is the name of the American hermeneuticist E.D. Hirsch Jr.'s famous 1967 book?
(a) "Validity in Interpretation."
(b) "Truth and Fact."
(c) "Meaning or Method."
(d) "Being and Time."

4. In the eighteenth-century, what was the whole body of writing in society considered, including philosophy, letters, history, poems, and essays?
(a) Theory.
(b) Religion.
(c) Canon.
(d) Literature.

5. According to Eagleton, literature is definable "not according to whether it is fictional or "imaginative," because it uses language in ____ways."
(a) Peculiar.
(b) Pendantic.
(c) Pragmatic.
(d) Profound.

6. What role does reception theory examine?
(a) The author's role.
(b) The teacher's role.
(c) The reader's role.
(d) The critic's role.

7. According to Eagleton, Gibbon and the authors of Genesis share what in common?
(a) Both wrote fiction that is read as historical fact.
(b) They both thought they were writing historical truth, but are read as fact by some and fiction by others.
(c) Both wrote historical truth that is read as fiction.
(d) Both wrote fiction that is read as fact by some and fiction by others.

8. According to Eagleton, what kind of age do we live in, where "meaning, like everything else, is expected to be instantly consumable"?
(a) Esoteric.
(b) Modern.
(c) Traditional.
(d) Postmodern.

9. During the last decades of the eighteenth-century, the word prosaic begins to acquire what a kind of connotation?
(a) A negative connotation.
(b) A positive connotation.
(c) A unfamiliar connotation.
(d) A familiar connotation.

10. From the viewpoint of Roland Barthes, Eagleton argues that "reading is less like a _______ than a _________."
(a) "Laboratory; boudoir."
(b) "Boudoir; system."
(c) "Boudoir; laboratory."
(d) "Philosophy; laboratory."

11. The distinction between fact and fiction in defining literature is what?
(a) Questionable.
(b) Difficult.
(c) Complicated.
(d) Important.

12. Eagleton argues that for Stanley Fish, what a text "does" to us is a matter of what we do to what?
(a) To the reader.
(b) To the text.
(c) To the author.
(d) To the critic.

13. The German philosopher Edmund Husserl argued that objects can be regarded as things ______ by consciousness.
(a) Realized.
(b) Intended.
(c) Evaluated.
(d) Understood.

14. According to Eagleton, the formalists were not out to define literature but they were out to define what?
(a) Inventiveness.
(b) Criticism.
(c) Literariness.
(d) Realism.

15. Eagleton's goal in "Literary Theory: An Introduction" is to provide a comprehensive account of literary theory for whom?
(a) Those who have specialised knowledge of literary theory.
(b) Those with little knowledge of literary theory.
(c) Those who have some knowledge of literary theory.
(d) Those with extensive knowledge of literary theory.

Short Answer Questions

1. What three sequential stages does Eagleton point out in the development of modern literary theory?

2. According to Eagleton, what idea is "truly elitist" in literary studies?

3. According to Eagleton, as the first industrialist capitalist nation, England becomes what kind of state?

4. For Eagleton, hostility toward theory means what?

5. What year did Terry Eagleton's "Literary Theory: An Introduction" first appear?

(see the answer keys)

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